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Morocco in Black & White

The author describes Morocco as a visually vibrant location but chooses to capture its essence in black and white. By removing color, the focus shifts to the underlying work and details often overshadowed by vivid hues. This approach reveals the true character of places like Casablanca, Fes, and Marrakech.

Morocco is the most colorful place I have ever pointed a camera at. So I took the color away.

Everyone comes home with the same photographs: the cobalt doors, the spice pyramids, the dye pits glowing like a paint box. That is the easy picture. Color does the work for you and flatters a frame that has nothing else going on. I wanted to see what was left when I stopped letting it.

One body, one lens, the whole trip in black and white. Casablanca gave up scale and grey Atlantic light under the Hassan II Mosque. Fes gave up the labor in the tannery once the famous color was gone, men waist-deep in the vats doing work older than any of us. Marrakech gave up faces and motion in the smoke of Jemaa el-Fnaa.

Take the color away, and you can finally see the work.

This is my Morocco, rendered in black and white, where it had nothing left to hide behind.

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